6. Jillian
— ? —
Jillian
The stamp drawer had become my white whale.
Three weeks of wedding thank-you notes sitting in neat stacks on my desk, handwritten because Margot had made a comment about “the lost art of correspondence” and I’d been foolish enough to take the bait.
Three weeks of meaning to mail them. Three weeks of forgetting to buy stamps every single time I left the house.
Trevor’s study seemed like the logical place to look. He kept everything, office supplies, spare batteries, the good scissors that actually cut things. Surely somewhere in that obsessively organized desk was a book of stamps.
The top drawer held pens, arranged by color like a particularly neurotic rainbow. The second drawer contained files I didn’t bother examining. The third drawer…
The Tiffany blue hit me like a slap.
I knew that box. Every woman knew that box. The robin’s-egg color, the white ribbon, the promise of a treasure expensive and meaningful inside. I’d received my own Tiffany box on our anniversary, a tennis bracelet that had made me cry, though now I wondered if his assistant had picked it out.
This box was smaller. Ring-sized, maybe, but when I lifted the lid, I found cufflinks. Sterling silver, elegant, classic. The kind of thing Trevor would wear to the office and charity galas.
Engraved with his initials.
My hands were steady as I picked up the card tucked beneath the velvet insert. Cream cardstock, expensive. The handwriting was feminine, with those ridiculous loops on the letters that I’d only seen in one place before.
So you don’t forget me again. Just like old times. - C
I read it three times.
Then I put everything back exactly as I’d found it, closed the drawer, and walked out of the study without the stamps.
***
The garden party was already in full swing when we arrived, which meant I’d successfully delayed our entrance by forty-five minutes through strategic wardrobe crises and a sudden need to reorganize my purse.
“You said you wanted to come,” Trevor reminded me as we walked up the flagstone path to his parents’ estate.
“I said I’d consider it.”
“You put on the dress.”
“I put on a dress. There’s a difference.”
He caught my elbow, pulling me to a stop just before we rounded the corner to the garden. “Jillian. Can we please just have one afternoon without…”
“Without what?”
“Without this.” He gestured vaguely at my face. “The attitude. The commentary. My mother worked hard on this party.”
“Your mother’s event coordinator worked hard on this party. Your mother pointed at things in a catalog.”
“That’s not…” He stopped himself, jaw tightening. “Please. Just smile, make small talk, and try not to start anything. For me.”
For him. As if I were the problem. As if I were the one hiding jewelry from other women in desk drawers.
I smiled. It felt like cracking porcelain. “Of course, darling. Wouldn’t dream of embarrassing you.”
The garden looked like a magazine spread, which it probably would be, given the photographer I spotted near the rose arbor.
White tents, champagne towers, women in hats that cost more than I used to make in a month.
Margot had outdone herself, which was really saying a lot given that Margot’s baseline was “aggressively excessive.”
“There they are!” Margot’s voice carried across the lawn with the precision of a woman who’d taken elocution lessons. “My beautiful boy and his lovely wife!”
She swept toward us in a cloud of Chanel and disapproval, air-kissing my cheeks without actually making contact. A skill, really. I’d never mastered the hover-kiss.
“Jillian, what a unique choice,” she said, eyeing my dress. “So brave of you to wear chartreuse.”
“It’s actually closer to celadon, but I appreciate the vocabulary attempt.”
Trevor’s hand found my lower back, pressing in warning.
“Well, you must come meet everyone.” Margot linked her arm through Trevor’s, physically removing him from my orbit. “Chloe’s been asking about you. She’s so excited to catch up.”
And there it was. The name that had been hovering over this entire afternoon like a storm cloud.
I followed them through the crowd, accepting champagne from a passing waiter and drinking half of it immediately. Liquid courage. Liquid relief, anyway.
Chloe was holding court near the hydrangeas, surrounded by Margot’s society friends like a queen among her ladies-in-waiting. She wore white, of course she did, a floaty sundress that made her look ethereal and bridal and absolutely calculated.
“Trevor!” She lit up when she saw him, stepping forward to embrace him with the kind of familiarity that made my teeth ache. “You made it! I was starting to worry.”
“Traffic,” he said, not pulling away quite fast enough.
“And Jillian.” Chloe turned to me with a smile so warm it almost seemed genuine. Almost. “Don’t you look… vibrant.”
“Thank you. I try.”
Margot materialized at Chloe’s elbow, one arm sliding around her waist. “Isn’t she just glowing? I keep telling her she needs to visit more often. After all” - she beamed at the assembled guests - “she’s practically family.”
The words landed exactly as intended. I could feel the collective attention of forty socialites swiveling toward me, watching for my reaction.
“Practically,” I agreed, my voice surprisingly steady. “And yet somehow I’m the one who actually married into it. Funny how that works.”
Trevor shot me a look that could have frozen champagne.
“The Andersons and the Williamses go back generations,” Margot continued smoothly, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Our children grew up together. First loves, you know. Those bonds never really fade.”
“Mother…” Trevor started.
“Oh, I know what you’re going to say.” Margot waved him off. “You’re going to tell me I’m being sentimental. But I can’t help it. Seeing you two together again just feels right.”
I finished my champagne. A waiter materialized immediately with a replacement. God bless the catering industry.
The afternoon wore on in a blur of pointed comments and carefully orchestrated encounters. Everywhere I turned, Chloe was there, laughing with Trevor’s cousins, charming his father’s business partners, sitting at the center of every photograph while I somehow ended up at the edges.
I was reaching for my fourth champagne when a woman I vaguely recognized from the hospital gala approached me. Victoria something. Old money, keen eyes, absolutely no filter.
“Mrs. Anderson.” She smiled, all teeth. “I have to ask, how do you handle having Chloe around so much? It must be… complicated.”
The garden seemed to go quiet. Or maybe that was just my pulse roaring in my ears.
“Handle?” I repeated.
“Well, everyone knows the history. The almost-engagement, the families’ expectations, the whole ‘supposed to be together’ narrative.
” Victoria sipped her champagne, watching me over the rim.
“And now she’s back, single, absolutely stunning.
Staying right there at Margot’s. I mean…
” She laughed, a bright, brittle sound. “I’d be losing my mind. ”
Around us, other conversations had paused. Women glancing over, pretending not to listen while hanging on every word. I could see them, Margot’s friends, Chloe’s admirers, waiting. Watching. Hoping.
They wanted me to break. That was the entertainment value I provided, the outsider wife, the interloper, the woman who’d somehow stolen a prize she wasn’t supposed to win. And now, with the rightful heir returned, they were gathered like Romans at the Colosseum, eager for blood.
“You know,” I said, setting down my untouched champagne, “I’ve never been great at handling things. I have a very low threshold for bulls…” I paused, smiled. “For politics. If you’ll excuse me.”
I walked away with my head high and my hands shaking.
Trevor was by the fountain, deep in conversation with two men I didn’t recognize. I touched his arm, and he flinched.
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m in the middle of…”
“Now.”
The edge in my voice must have registered, because he excused himself with a practiced smile and followed me to a more secluded spot by the rose arbor.
“What is it?” he asked. “What’s so urgent you had to…”
“The cufflinks.”
He went still. Just for a second, but I saw it.
“I was looking for stamps,” I continued, my voice low and controlled. “Found a Tiffany box in your desk instead. With a very interesting note. A line about old times. A line about not forgetting.”
“Jillian…”
“She’s buying you jewelry, Trevor. Chloe is buying my husband jewelry and hiding it in your desk and you didn’t think that was a fact I should know about?”
“It was a gift. For the wedding. A congratulatory…”
“With a note that says ‘just like old times’? What exactly is congratulatory about that?”
He ran a hand through his hair, the gesture so familiar it hurt. “You’re reading into things. Making a crisis out of nothing.”
“Am I? Am I also inventing your mother parading her around like she’s the daughter-in-law she actually wanted? Out of everyone at this party treating me like I’m the other woman in my own marriage?”
“Keep your voice down.”
“Answer the question.”
“It’s just a gift.” He looked at me, and for a moment I didn’t recognize him. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
The words hit like a physical blow. I actually stepped back, steadying myself against the fountain’s edge.
“I’m embarrassing…”
“There you are!” Margot appeared out of nowhere, Chloe trailing behind her like a beautifully designed shadow. “Trevor, darling, the Hendersons are leaving and they wanted to say goodbye. And Chloe, you absolutely must tell him about London…”
She swept them both away without a second glance at me. Chloe looked back once, and I could have sworn I saw a glint of satisfaction in her perfect eyes.
***
I made it to the parking lot before the tears started.
My fingers fumbled with the phone, pulling up Harper’s contact. She answered on the second ring.
“Jilly? What’s wrong?”
“I think…” My voice cracked, and I pressed my free hand to my mouth, trying to hold it together. “I think I’m losing my husband and I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Okay. Okay, where are you? Do you need me to…”
“I don’t know what to do, Harper. Everyone’s watching me like I’m some kind of, like they’re waiting for me to just break, and maybe I am, maybe I’m actually…”
“You’re not breaking. You’re calling me, which means you’re still fighting. Where are you right now?”
“His parents’ house. Their garden party.” I laughed, the sound wet and bitter. “I was looking for stamps. That’s all I wanted. Just stamps for thank-you notes that now seem completely pointless because my entire marriage might be a…”
My phone buzzed with a notification. I wouldn’t have looked except I saw Margot’s name in the preview.
“Hold on,” I told Harper.
The photo loaded.
It was Trevor and Chloe, standing by the rose arbor, the same rose arbor where he’d told me I was embarrassing myself. They were laughing, his arm draped casually around her shoulders. Easy. Comfortable. Right.
In the corner of the original image, I could see a flash of chartreuse.
But not in this version. In this version, I’d been cropped out entirely.
The caption made my stomach drop.
Some connections never break. After all these years, still perfectly matched. Welcome home, Chloe. ??
The two who were always meant to find their way back.